Showcase Your Expertise with Your Book

Cindy
Well hello everyone and welcome to the Business Book Bistro, where you’ll learn from fellow authors what’s working for them to leverage their book for fun and profit.

So you’re bound to discover new ways you may make more money from your book from sales or other activities. I’m your host Cindy Carothers, also known as the Beyond Book Sales Coach, and today I am really pleased to be welcoming Alegra Lowenstein, and I’m going to switch over to the script because I want to make sure I read her bio properly. Alegra is a best-selling independent author on the topics of holistic health, emotional eating and how an earth based spirituality can foster health and happiness.

She also speaks on how to go from idea to published, and when to outsource your writing. She is a ghostwriter for speakers, coaches and business owners also.

And I just want to say welcome Alegra. You are the first ghost writer that we’ve had on this on this program, and I think the listeners and viewers are in for a treat to learn a little bit more about what it is you do so, why don’t you start by telling us why you wrote your books.

Alegra
Yeah, thanks for having me. So I wrote my books originally as a health coach, and I saw so much interest and leverage from the first book that I wrote that I wrote another one and pretty soon I just realized that the books are really a hot place to be. And I had previously ghost written and so I did a total pivot of my business. I did a collaborative project with multiple authors writing different sections to sort of figure out where exactly that I wanted to place myself and at the end of that project I had ghostwritten a chapter for somebody and I thought, This really makes sense. And just to clarify what ghost writing is it’s when you actually outsource the whole, entire writing project so it’s different than a writing coach, it’s different than an editor, it really is a true outsourcing of the writing but the writing is still completely based on the author’s ideas and genius.

And so at that point I already had books, and I was going into the business as a ghostwriter. And so I now use my books as a proof of concept and marketing for my writing as a service.

Cindy
So it started as participating in an anthology where everyone contributed and sort of mushroomed from there. That’s very exciting.

Alegra
Yeah, exactly. With the anthology, part of the realization was I thought, “Oh, This will be so easy; I don’t even have to write the book.” And as it turned out that the chapter that I wrote, under my own name and the chapter that I ghost wrote, those were the easiest chapters.

And so that was part of as I thought this is really a skill that I have that I can bring to the table for people, and you know it’s a valuable service that saves busy people time. For me it’s kind of my zone of genius, as we like to talk about.

So I endeavored in that collaborative project specifically to sort of try out a lot of different aspects in this writing process – coaching and ghost-writing and editing and formatting – the whole thing right? Book to finish, but with other people.

And that was not a moneymaker, the book has not sold well. But it was highly valuable for me as an exploratory project and a clarifying project.

Cindy
So you learned from it, as you went through the whole process – like which pieces of it you are good at, which pieces of it you like, what you don’t like. And, they’re all learning experiences and they are all important because they bring you to where you are now.

Now one thing I wanted to clarify for people, is that a ghost writer does not, you’re not, somebody’s not dictating to you what to say.

They generally give you ideas or they give you materials to look at and you extract and organize or consolidate and make it cohesive, help me with that – what is it?

Alegra
That’s actually right. Typically when I do my ghostwriting I do a very lengthy interview process and I record it right? Because then I can really capture that person’s voice; their true voice. I listen to it, but it’s not a transcription by any means because in interviews, you know we talk about this, we talk about that, in any interview, right?

It’s human interaction, but then we have the outline of the project from the beginning. So then I rearrange, mesh, create – I mean I do all the writing, I will integrate their turns of phrase, their unique way of speaking, but it is me doing the writing, and so it’s typically busy people in business that are knowing that they need a book for a business purpose but are already far enough along in a business that they don’t have time to write a book and/or they know that’s not a skill that they have. Even people who write a lot, they don’t necessarily have the skill for the sort of long form type of writing that book requires.

So interviews and then if they have other content, if they have classes or if they have a blog or some other short form that they’ve written, that can be useful, but it’s not required. You don’t ever take that and just assemble it. You can tell when people do stuff like that; it’s not a good book.

Cindy
It has to flow. If it’s choppy then – yes every chapter has to stand on its own but there has to be a flow that goes through it all.

So it’s actually a very unique way for somebody to be using a book – the way you do – as the proof of concept to other busy people who are looking to write a book, you can say – “here, I’ve got my book; this is the kind of work that I do.”

But you also sell your books as well, correct?

Alegra
Absolutely yes. So I do essentially have two businesses, but they mesh and intermingle. So I have the business of ghost writing which is a service based business; so I’m selling a service, and my books that I’ve written that I’m the author of. Most people don’t even care about reading them; they just know that I’ve written eight books now. So just the prolific writing I think speaks for itself. And I usually cannot share my clients work – it’s often under confidentiality contracts – so you kind of need something to say, “No, really, I really do write books.” So that really works as a powerful kind of background marketing concept of just “I have all these books”.

And then I separately do sell my books and again kind of jumping backwards in times to when I wrote that first book and I was working in the health coaching industry, I thought that that was going to become a major income stream for the health coaching business, and a marketing tool for health coaching services and what I found was I consider it my ‘slow burn’- that’s my slow burn business. So certainly people can kind of make their book list explode and sell a lot of books but you have to sell a lot of books to make that a primary income stream and so what I realized was I can do that more as a passion based project.

And I do a lot of free content for each book that I write. I make something printable or audio or a video series to go with it and get people on my list for those things because I only sell through Amazon so I don’t get their contact information that way. And then I market in the monthly email to people on the list, who have an interest in the content of my books – and I always clarify my books where I’m the author have a specific subject. My clients’ books is on their specific subjects.

The writing process is pretty different but at the end of the day I’m growing an email list and I just found that I do have organic growth that we talked about that but it is slow, and it’s more fun for me to keep that in my kind of passion zone and not stress about like ‘oh I don’t have thousands of people on my email list yet.’ I’m like okay yeah; I’m almost to 1000; that’s pretty good and I only do that from a place of joy.

And so I give away all that stuff direct from my email and that’s where it’s just totally organic. People come and find it slowly.

And then I also donate my online courses that I created as a health coach but they go kind of with the book. There’s an amazing tool called donation match. As a business owner if you have something of value – you can’t put your freebies on there so I don’t put my freebies from my books – but these are in depth, week long courses that I have previously created. They go to auctions so you’re donating to causes that you care about. You can choose which ones align with your cause, your mission, your values.

And then, because they contact me to get enrolled, then they go from the course, they roll over to this email list, and it’s all content.

The pandemic kind of messed that up because a lot of the auctions got cancelled; they were in person but it’s picking up again. And it’s not fast but it’s very consistent, and it’s just a really ‘feel good’ way to reach out to new people, and it’s clever because they always say the person who pays for something is the best client, right? That’s the people you want on your list. So they did pay for it, but they didn’t pay me for it, so it kind of opens the door in this different way.

Cindy
Well it positions you as a generous kind of a person; a giving person. And I would say the kind of person who I’d like to connect up with because I bought the course to support this group and you donated to support this group – so you’ve got something in common with them already.

And my mind is going ‘boom’ because there’s so many things I want to cover here and I know we want to keep this to 15 maybe 20 minutes.

What I will say is that later I will get the link for donate match – is that what it is called?

Alegra
Donation match. I am a donation match fan girl; I truly love what they do.

It’s an amazing organization.

Cindy
Well, I will get the link for that and I will put it into the show notes or drop it in the comments below the Facebook video when it’s when I get it so that people can connect up with that. As well as some information on connecting up with Alegra.

But I wanted to ask because you’re using your books in so many different directions and that’s really what I think a lot of people are looking for – is the ideas of where they can go with their books.

So you participated in an anthology, you offer ghostwriting services, you’ve written your own books, you got some courses and some audios out of that.

And like I said, my mind is wondering which way do I go first.

So, maybe let me circle back to your book – or the books that you write for as a ghostwriter.

Your topic for yourself is around the area of health. What kind of topics do you write on for other people? Is there a niche that you specialize in or is it just like busy executives, I’ll help you ghostwrite your book? So tell me a little bit about that.

Alegra
Yeah, both, yeah. So typically the most common thing that I see – and this this gets to kind of what does a book do for you – is they need a book because they’re going to start speaking, or they’re already speaking and they want a book to sort of leverage further in what they’re doing on the stage.

And so I would say that a book is a really powerful tool for opening doors, right? So sometimes it may be slower than you want it to be to make the direct income from selling your book, but it can be a really powerful tool to opening doors which can then get other means of monetizing right? So people are speaking, they’re getting paid to speak or they’re speaking for free but they’re selling their book as they speak. Things like that, and oddly I’ve written for a lot of people in human resources who were doing some interesting stuff and we’re talking about that.

Human Resources seems like a sort of’ not that exciting a field’ but at the end of the day it is about human connections, so a lot of these people are coming saying ‘I want to write this book that kind of humanizes Human Resources right?” Someone in the law, who was in HR law was about really trying to essentially prevent litigation by working on that human connection in the first place, in the workplace setting.

And so yeah, that’s just that really every business is different, so whether you’re an author with a business or whether you’re a business owner, just wanting to put a book into the mix, everybody’s business is different so I do see that kind of unique to each person. But what I really love to do as a ghostwriter is to tell a little bit of the person’s personal story, focus on kind of what their expertise or wisdom is, and then always in the nonfiction realm, “How can the reader apply that in their own life?” And that’s what my books do too. I’m writing about the sort of health and wellness realm, but I’m always thinking “I don’t want you just read this and put the book down and I don’t want you to nod your head as you’re reading it and get to the end and put the book down and nothing ever changes”.

I want you to nod your head when you’re reading it and then put the book down and be like ‘okay I’m going to do a, b and c now because I understand this.’

So, again, whether it’s through someone working on like how we’re going to build that human connection – well okay let’s make sure we talk about when you communicate with somebody make sure that you do – whatever this isn’t real – but like make sure you make eye contact or whatever it is – an action; we want to break this down into things that we can walk away with and use in our real life.

Cindy
Well, I’m going to switch gears and I’m going to ask you one question that I do like to ask everyone, and that is in the course of writing, marketing or selling your book, or figuring out how you’re going to monetize it, we learn so many lessons along the way. And so I’d like you to share if you can something that was unexpected that came out of your process; something you didn’t really expect that surprised you.

Alegra
When I completely deleted all of my social media accounts, my income from my book sales,  didn’t change at all.

And I felt like I got a raise, because I got so much time back.

Cindy
I like that.

Alegra
Don’t be overly attached to things that you have done if you don’t really see the proof.

You know, I was so invested in social media. I spent a lot of time promoting myself and my books on social media.

And I kind of knew it wasn’t really moving the needle but I spent so much time over multiple years.

And my silver lining in the pandemic, and I can’t say it brought me a lot of silver linings, but I completely deleted all social media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter I didn’t really use Twitter but I deleted it anyway. And I got a lot of my time back, and I really saw zero changes.

Cindy
Do you have any idea, any thoughts as to why that happened or how that happened? Like what is it that are you using that is selling your book -what is working?

Or haven’t you been able to pinpoint it – just had the realization was that social media didn’t make a difference for you.

Alegra
I think at the end of the day, I think my bestseller status that I achieved with several of my books.

I do think that came out of social media but that was not a lot, a lot of times that was when the book was on sale for 99 cents or whatever like the E book.

I can’t say that even when I reached number one it was necessarily a big moneymaker and that wasn’t lasting. And so, you know, I just think a lot of people aren’t really necessarily buying things.

People do buy things via social media and I know people sell books on social media but I always had a feeling that that wasn’t really my way. But I was so attached to it because I had so much time invested in it.

So yeah that’s sort of the big takeaway – like you don’t see the proof, then don’t be overly attached and don’t be overly attached because they say you have to do it, because everyone doesn’t have to be on social media. You don’t have to be on social media and certainly you can use it and I did at times, but when I was launching a book I was on there four times as much time as what I was normally on there. So I’m just thinking, “Even if I make $100 or $200 whatever it was, it wasn’t really worth my time.” It really wasn’t.

Cindy
Well now when you say social media that’s different from digital.

So I know your books are on your website; are they also on Amazon? Are you selling other avenues?

Alegra
I only pretty much sell on Amazon, I’ll occasionally do an in person event. And if something comes up, if I happened upon it and I’m like yeah that would make sense for me – either something local or something health or whatever it looks like – maybe once a year and obviously not the past year.

But really, I think I have a lot of good keywords in my Amazon titles and book description.

Amazon ads never really made me money – I never really made more money running ads than not running ads.

I think I have a lot of good keywords and my first book is still my best seller. It’s called Emotional Eating Detox. I think the title was really spot on, and the long subtitle with a lot of keywords is a good book description.

That’s still my best seller and I really have honed in on my email list. It’s slow- it’s a slow growth thing but I really just focused on that.

And again I just shifted it where I really decided that this was a slow growing arm of my business.

And it’s allowing me to be stay in place of joy with it which honestly when you’re writing, is what you want to be. You don’t want to be miserable when you’re writing; I think that comes through. And it allows me to be a little bit playful. And it allows me to be kind of no pressure, and to let go of things that aren’t really serving me either personally.

You know, like I said, even if I was making 20 -$50 a month selling books on Facebook by spending an hour a day or more, and I don’t have good boundaries and I’m getting sucked in and then I’m like wasting time too. I’m not a kind of person who’s like 15 minutes on and off Facebook and then I’m done. I don’t have the self-control.

Cindy
That’s really hard for me. We spend hours and they spend millions and millions of man hours trying to figure out how to keep you on and sucked in. So, the lone voice trying to like pull back is – it’s hard. It’s very hard.

Well, I know that I’m going to ask you – well you’ve given a lot of advice, I’m going to ask you for a final piece of advice in one second.

But I want to give you a few seconds, a minute – to tell people about how they can get in contact with you, you have a free gift that you want to offer to them. So would you tell us a little bit about that?

Alegra
Yeah, thank you. I am offering up what I call Coffee Chat. It’s pretty casual via telephone. I usually do on telephone – I don’t even get on the screen.

And it’s just a chance if you have questions about ghostwriting. If you think you’re considering a ghostwriter, then it’s just a chance like kind of have a heart to heart, casual conversation to answer any questions about that.

And you can go to Alegra Lowenstein dot com slash contacts. alegraloewenstein.com slash contact but if you go to the homepage, it’s right there; I don’t have a lot of tabs.

And yeah, you just say like interested to chat with you about ghost writing and it goes direct to my email inbox so love to invite people on the phone.

Cindy
So anyone who’s watching either live or on the replay – if you are a busy executive or you know a busy executive who wants a book but doesn’t have the time to put into it themselves, please pass into Alergra’s information onto them.

I didn’t ask you how you marketed to those people or found those people but certainly this is one way of putting your name out there by talking a little bit about what you do and asking people to have a chat with you.

Because I think they could learn a lot about the benefits and the time that they would save, if they work with a ghost writer such as yourself to get a book together. And certainly you shared with us a lot of different ways that someone could make money from their book so it’s not just “okay I have this book, now what do I do with it?”

Re-listen to this episode, because she’s got at 5 or 6 ways that someone can make money from their book.

So we are coming on the end of this and we’ve gone a little bit over, so very quickly I would ask you if there’s any final piece of advice that you wanted to share with people today?

Alegra
I would just say when it comes to selling books, and marketing books, just try to stay in that playful zone. And just try it, try something, try whatever crazy idea that you have. Give it a try until you have enough data to see if this is sustainable for you as an individual, and if it is moving the needle for your business. And if not, let it go. Because it took me way too long to let the social media go. I knew it, I knew it needed to go and it took too long to top me.

Cindy
Okay, so that’s two pieces of advice. Or three pieces. Try something. Keep it playful. And if it’s not working, don’t feel bad about letting it go.

Okay, well thank you.

I really appreciate you coming on with me today. I want to thank everyone who watches, whether you’re again live or on the replay.

There’s been a ton of good ideas here from Alegra, thank you so much for joining us.

I want to also remind everybody we’re here every week, next week is the 28th, and we’ll be here again at noon.

If you are someone who has a book for business, and you’re interested in being a guest, please send me a message, I’d be happy to chat with you to see if you’re a good fit, and hopefully host you and have you here.

If you know other authors or people who are interested in using their book for their business, please let them know that we are here every Friday at the Business Book Bistro on More From Your Book.com

You’ll find from other authors what’s working now to market and sell their books, to spread a message or to build their business. I’m your host Cindy Carothers signing off now and wishing you all much success in the work that you do.

Thank you viewers for being with us.

Thank you Alegra for coming and sharing all of your knowledge

I appreciate both of you.

Bye for now.